I think we need to go for the jugular at Emirates. Away tie will be tough anyway, not sure how much the political tensions will add to that, but it wouldn’t be a trip I’d like to make as a fan atm. But regarding the game, I think we need to take a healthy advantage to Moscow. We don’t want to be going there having to win the game by a couple of goals.
When was the last time a Russian team gave us problems? Can't see them being any better than AC Milan and we cruised past them. Only thing that's an issue is us not putting our goals away but Welbeck seems to be hitting some form which is good news.
The fact people are making big deal out of the Wellbeck dive is ****ing hilarious. Shows how anti- Arsenal the media is these days! It made NO real difference . We won 5-1 on aggregate and it could have easily been 3-4 more. We dominated this tie the penalty made very little difference.
They aren't usually Arsenal friendly but Wengers comments on English players being the masters of diving made it worse.
Did anyone see the CSKA v Lyon match? Interesting to see that Lyon lost the tie overall at home but beat them at CSKA. I wonder if it was a lack of concentration or CSKA was really good. Probably the former.
Well to be fair - Wellbeck just proving Wellbeck correct. Also Alli and Young are probably the biggest divers in this league so Wenger might be on to something.
In the context of the tie, I'm not sure you can say the penalty 'made very little difference'. Not only did they halve the deficit, as we have seen from Arsenal in the past when we concede a goal, there is a tendency for the floodgates to open. Had the Welbeck penalty not been awarded, it would still be 2-1 on aggregate. Then the game is on a knife-edge. You saw what happened with Ostersunds in the previous Europa home fixture. It gets jittery. Obviously, we did very well in responding to Calhanoglu's goal and we had the momentum, as Milan sat deeper. And if I'm honest, I do think we still would have won the tie. But that's based on nothing other than gut feeling and guesses. The reality is, at 2-1 on aggregate, the next goal was pivotal and we were gifted a very fortuitous chance that we thankfully didn't spurn. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I very much doubt you'd be saying the penalty 'made very little difference'. Let's just take ownership of the fact we got very lucky with that situation and hope it doesn't come back to bite us in our next games.
I cant think of a game in recent years where a dive & penalty had a smaller influence. Obviously cant say it had no influence. But do you really think without that incident we weren't going to go on and win that game? It wasn't a close tie. 58% possession 17 shots on goal. We didn't thrash them but it wasn't a particularly close game. Dont think we should still be debating this.
As I already stated in my post above, I still think we had enough in the tank to see the game through and progress regardless. However, it doesn't change the fact that if Milan go into HT winning 0-1 and the scoreline is 2-1 on aggregate, which is what the scoreline most likely would have been had the penalty not been given, nerves would have crept in and the team talk for both sides is completely different. We've seen it all too many times before and I'm actually surprised you were that confident we'd see it out given how mentally/defensively feeble we have proven to be over the course of the season. You can post all the possession and shots statistics all you like. It doesn't mean anything because a) they scored the first goal despite us being in the ascendancy anyway, so at that point, all the shots and possession we had becomes irrelevant. And b) how many of those chances did we have following the penalty where we were comfortable again. I'd wager as the game got more comfortable, we settled into our stride and were able to play with more freedom. Let's not re-write history. Milan still gave us a few scares here and there, it's not as if we completely shut them out.
